“This is a reminder about an important change to our Thanksgiving and Christmas Dinner-in-the-Park events. Due to stricter Health Department regulations, WE ARE NO LONGER ABLE to accept turkeys or other home-prepared food donations (including side dishes, turkeys, and desserts) at the event.”

Southern California’s largest, most important charitable institution serving the homeless and the needy outside of Downtown Los Angeles has been feeding thousands of people in the park just below Old Pasadena for more than 35 years. And the food has never been anything but first-rate. Hundreds of drivers pull up at the park’s borders each Thanksgiving and Christmas morning and hand over to Union Station volunteers whole roasted birds, wild-rice dressing, green beans and almonds, sweet potatoes, pecan pies — all freshly cooked. The exact same food the local chefs who cooked it will serve to their own families later in the day.

These traditions have not exactly been a secret. The drop-off scene has been on the front of our paper dozens of times.

Unlike every other Southern California city except for Long Beach, Pasadena has its own health department, the executives of which surely have known about the dinner all these years. They read the paper, right?

Suddenly, the health department has issued an edict that because home kitchens aren’t inspected by city bureaucrats, the tradition can’t go on. Many local home cooks have called the paper in their outrage, and some have said they are considering taking their grassroots anger against nutty bureaucracy to the streets ... and the park!

Union Station itself is being very circumspect. It has to deal with City Hall, after all, and can’t afford to anger it. Still, you can hear the regret in Union Station CEO Rabbi Marvin Gross’ comment: “It’s a shame that people can’t come and donate items that some of them have done for many years. It was always a really loving way in which people participated in this event.”

Were there any health problems associated with the meals? None. It’s just there’s a new hall monitor in town, Liza Frias, environmental health division manager. “Are you kidding me that people really drive up and drop off turkeys?” she said to Staff Writer Sarah Favot.

No kidding.

Food-related health regulations, well-applied, are a good thing. They stop us from getting sick. But was there any effort to work with the community on this and come up with a compromise? Was any member of the City Council informed about putting the kibosh on 35 years of healthy tradition? If council members did know, did they do anything?

This is the same City Hall, after all, that created the innovative solution to the perceived problem of food-cart vendors selling tamales and other foods from the sidewalk. A community kitchen was created, up to restaurant standards. Offering that space would have been a start toward a compromise.

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But in the end, this was a solution in search of a problem. Thanks to killjoy commissars, the needy will now be served dehydrated mashed potatoes from boxes on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanks for nothing.